An exchange is a central marketplace with established rules and regulations where buyers and sellers meet to trade. Some exchanges, referred to as open outcry exchanges, operate using a trading floor where buyers and sellers physically meet on the floor to trade. Other exchanges, referred to as electronic exchanges, operate by an electronic or telecommunications network instead of a trading floor to facilitate trading in an efficient, versatile, and functional manner. Electronic exchanges have made it possible for an increasing number of people to actively participate in a market at any given time. The increase in the number of potential market participants has advantageously led to, among other things, a more competitive market and greater liquidity.
With respect to electronic exchanges, buyers and sellers may log onto an electronic exchange trading platform by way of a communication link through their user terminals. Once connected, buyers and sellers may typically choose which tradable objects they wish to trade. As used herein, the term “tradable object” refers to anything that can be traded with a quantity and/or price. Examples of tradable objects may include, but are not limited to, all types of traded events, goods, and/or financial products, which can include, for example, stocks, options, bonds, futures, currency, and warrants, as well as funds, derivatives and collections of the foregoing, and all types of commodities, such as grains, energy, and metals. The tradable object may be “real,” such as products that are listed by an exchange for trading, or “synthetic,” such as a combination of real products that is created by the user. A tradable object could actually be a combination of other tradable object, such as a class of tradable objects.
When a trader selects a tradable object, traders may access market data related to the selected tradable object(s). Referring to FIG. 1, an example communication that might occur between an electronic exchange and a client terminal in accordance with the preferred embodiments is shown. During a trading session, market data 108 in the form of messages may be relayed from a host exchange 106 over communication links 116 and 112 to a client terminal generally indicated as 102. As illustrated in FIG. 1, intermediate devices, such as gateway(s) 104 may be used to facilitate communications between the client terminal 102 and the host exchange 106.
The market data 108 contains information that characterizes the tradable object's order book including, among other parameters, order related parameters, and the inside market, which represents the lowest sell price (also referred to as the best or lowest ask price) and the highest buy price (also referred to as the best or highest bid price). In some electronic markets, market data may also include market depth, which generally refers to quantities available in the market at certain buy price levels and quantities available in the market at certain sell price levels.
In addition to providing the tradable object's order book information, electronic exchanges can offer different types of market information such as total traded quantity for each price level, last traded price, last traded quantity, or order fill information. Typically, a trader may view the information provided from an exchange via one or more specialized trading screens created by software running on the client terminal 102. Upon viewing the market information or a portion thereof, a trader may wish to take actions, such as send orders to an exchange, cancel orders at the exchange, or change order parameters, for example. To do so, the trader may input various commands or signals into the client terminal 102. Upon receiving one or more commands or signals from the trader, the client terminal 102 may generate messages that reflect the actions taken, generally shown at 110. It should be understood that different types of messages or order types can be submitted to the host exchange 106, all of which may be considered various types of transaction information. Once generated, user action messages 110 may be sent from the client terminal 102 to the host exchange over communication links 114 and 116.
To profit in electronic markets, market participants must be able to assimilate large amounts of data in order to recognize market trends and to view current market conditions. Among many different market data types, a trading screen on the client terminal 102 may display volume that has been traded for a tradable object at different price levels during a trading day, often referred to as volume at price. In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1, the client terminal 102 or the gateway 104 may receive market updates from the host exchange 106, and may use the information provided in the updates to calculate the traded volume for each price level. Alternatively, the traded volume may be calculated at the host exchange 106 and may be sent to the client terminal 102 in market data updates. Once the traded volume is calculated and received at the client terminal 102, the traded volume data may be displayed via a trading screen on the client terminal 102. To illustrate this further, FIGS. 2A and 2B show a type of graphical user interface that may be used to display traded volume related data.
FIG. 2A shows a graphical interface 200A that can be displayed on a trading screen of the client terminal 102 to show traded volume related information in relation to the market's order book related data. In particular, the interface 200A shows aggregate buy and sell orders that are currently in the market, as illustrated in columns 204 and 206. The buy and sell order quantities are shown in relation to prices displayed in a price column 208. For instance, the best bid is for a quantity of 120 at a price of 140, and the best ask is for a quantity of 75 at a price of 141. Other bids and asks are shown for illustrative purposes. The interface 200A also shows graphical representation of traded volume related information for different price levels. In the embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2A, the traded volume is displayed using a bar chart including a horizontal bar at each price level. The graphical interface 200A illustrates four bars 210A-216A corresponding to traded volume of 25, 50, 100, and 75, respectively, at four price levels 142-139. In the illustrated embodiment, the maximum length of the longest bar, the bar corresponding to the quantity of 100 in this example, may correspond to the highest traded volume value, and the length of other bars may be automatically adjusted when the highest traded volume value changes. Therefore, in other words, the longest bar corresponds to the highest traded volume, and, as the traded volume corresponding to the longest bar increases, the other bars are auto-scaled to represent its traded volumes as percentages of the highest traded volume.
FIG. 2B shows the same interface of FIG. 2A upon detecting a change in a value of the highest traded volume. More specifically, the traded volume at the price of 140 has changed from 100 to 200, while the maximum length of the bar 214B remained constant compared to the bar 214A. Consequently, even thought the traded volume values at the price levels, other than 140, have not changed, the lengths of the bars 210B, 212B, and 216B, have been adjusted based on the new maximum traded volume value corresponding to the bar 214B. Since the length of the bars can change even when a traded volume value at a specific price level does not, such implementation may be confusing to a trader who wishes to monitor traded volume values at different price levels. In a different embodiment, a trader could be given the ability to manually rescale the displayed bars, such as to make one or more bars longer, for example, to plot the progressively increasing traded volume. However, such a method could also turn out very burdensome to a trader, forcing the trader to focus his attention on monitoring the traded volume and then, responsively, rescaling the bars to view the desired information. It is therefore desirable to offer user-friendly tools that can assist a market participant in making desirable trades while reducing the risks associated with misreading market information provided to a trader.